Legal Secretary
- Recruiter
- Holman Fenwick Willan LLP
- Location
- Greece (GR)
- Salary
- Up to EUR42,000 per annum
- Posted
- 27 Apr 2017
- Closes
- 25 May 2017
- Job Title
- Legal Secretary
- Practice Area
- Shipping
- Contract Type
- Permanent
- Hours
- Full Time
Key Objective
To take an active interest in and obtain a thorough understanding of all aspects of client requirements to provide exceptional service levels to both lawyers and clients, and act as workflow manager for other support services, including delegating the completion of document production, file management and copying/scanning work.
Key Responsibilities
In line with policies and procedures, key responsibilities include:
Administration:
- Manage diaries, ensuring they are up-to-date, and reminding lawyers of meetings, etc. on a daily basis;
- Arrange meetings, book conference rooms, refreshments/catering, check room set-up prior to meetings and liaise with other attendees, both internal and external;
- Arrange for travel bookings and related details, including travel expenses;
- Scanning, photocopying, printing, organising couriers, sending out of letters, etc.
- Open and close files, file management and record-keeping;
- Use effective systems to ensure that both short and long-term tasks are completed within required timescales;
- Support lawyers in marketing activities, including involvement in preparing pitches and presentations.
Communications:
- Take internal and external queries, responding as appropriate and/or ensuring that all messages are passed on in a timely manner;
- Monitor post and/or e-mails and deal with as appropriate and ensure that all client-related correspondence is passed on to an appropriate fee earner if the relevant person is out of the office;
- Liaise with business support departments on behalf of lawyers as required;
- Liaise with the secretarial co-ordinator regarding arranging cover for planned absences, as necessary and communicating this to the relevant fee earners.
Client relationship management:
- Opening and closing cases in compliance with case management procedures;
- Become an active part in the care of clients and be wholly familiar with contacts/clients;
- Deal with basic client queries and general administration;
- Arrange client meetings.
Document production:
- Produce correspondence, attachments, documents, reports, presentations, etc. in good time and undertake amendments where appropriate;
- Type urgent/short/confidential correspondence;
- Produce and maintain Excel spreadsheets as required.
Financial:
- Assist lawyers in ensuring their time is recorded properly and entered onto the system on a daily basis;
- Assist lawyers in the billing and credit control process by liaising with the lawyer and Revenue & Collections to produce standard financial/time reports through the system;
- Request cheques, bank transfers and pay in money received, as appropriate.
Team Work:
- Assist others in the office, both proactively whenever there is spare capacity or it is evident that a colleague needs assistance with their workload and at the request of the secretarial co-ordinator;
- Pick up telephone calls for other members of the office when they are away from their desk;
- Participate in a lunch time (telephone/reception) rota;
- Work effectively with other legal and business services departments as required
- Any other ad hoc duties as reasonably requested.
Key Skills & Experience Required
The Legal Secretary has responsibility to ensure that his/her skill set is up-to-date, and that he/she is familiar with the firm's groups, departments, key personnel, clients, internal systems and procedures.
In addition:
- Two years' previous experience either within a law firm or in-house legal team.
- Fluent in English and Greek.
- Accurate typing speed of at least 60 words per minute.
- Knowledge of Microsoft Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, research tools and other systems implemented by the firm.
- Excellent customer service skills, dealing with people and tasks in a professional, polite and considerate manner.
- Excellent telephone manner and competent knowledge of telephone system.
- Excellent communication, organisational and team skills.
- Excellent attention to detail.
- Flexible and dependable, able to take the initiative.
- Able to remain calm under pressure and work to tight deadlines.
- Conscientious, approachable and enthusiastic.
- Able to build confidence, respect and trust with others quickly.
- Have a positive approach to daily tasks and have a solutions-focussed working method.
- Flexible with regard to working hours, arriving earlier and staying later when the job or business requires.
Additional Information
Kindly note that this job description is not contractual. It will be reviewed periodically and may be amended or altered to meet the needs of the firm.
Lawyers for international commerce
Holman Fenwick Willan aims to ensure equality of opportunity and we are actively working towards improving the diversity of our staff. All applications will only be considered on merit and the applicant's suitability to meet the requirements of the role.
Only direct applications accepted. The firm reserves the right to contact and work directly with candidates whose CVs have been submitted by a recruitment agency who has not been instructed on a particular role by the firm.
Due to the volume of applications, only those candidates shortlisted for interview will be contacted.